RPG Evolution: The Trouble with Halflings

Over the decades I've developed my campaign world to match the archetypes my players wanted to play. In all those years, nobody's ever played a halfling.

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

So What's the Problem?​

Halflings, derived from hobbits, have been a curious nod to Tolkien's influence on fantasy. While dwarves and elves have deep mythological roots, hobbits are more modern inventions. And their inclusion was very much a response to the adventurous life that the agrarian homebodies considered an aberration. In short, most hobbits didn't want to be adventurers, and Bilbo, Frodo, and the others were forever changed by their experiences, such that it was difficult for them to reintegrate when they returned home. You don't hear much about elves and dwarves having difficulty returning home after being adventurers, and for good reason. Tolkien was making a point about the human condition and the nature of war by using hobbits as proxies.

As a literary construct, hobbits serve a specific purpose. In The Hobbit, they are proxies for children. In The Lord of the Rings, they are proxies for farmers and other folk who were thrust into the industrialized nightmare of mass warfare. In both cases, hobbits were a positioned in contrast to the violent lifestyle of adventurers who live and die by the sword.

Which is at least in part why they're challenging to integrate into a campaign world. And yet, we have strong hobbit archetypes in Dungeons & Dragons, thanks to Dragonlance.

Kender. Kender Are the Problem​

I did know one player who loved to play kender. We never played together in a campaign, at least in part because kender are an integral part of the Dragonlance setting and we weren't playing in Dragonlance. But he would play a kender in every game he played, including in massive multiplayers like Ultima Online. And he was eye-rollingly aggravating, as he loved "borrowing" things from everyone (a trait established by Tasselhoff Burrfoot).

Part of the issue with kender is that they aren't thieves, per se, but have a child-like curiosity that causes them to "borrow" things without understanding that borrowing said things without permission is tantamount to stealing in most cultures. In essence, it results in a character who steals but doesn't admit to stealing, which can be problematic for inter-party harmony. Worse, kender have a very broad idea of what to "borrow" (which is not limited to just valuables) and have always been positioned as being offended by accusations of thievery. It sets up a scenario where either the party is very tolerant of the kender or conflict ensues. This aspect of kender has been significantly minimized in the latest draft for Unearthed Arcana.

Big Heads, Little Bodies​

The latest incarnation of halflings brings them back to the fun-loving roots. Their appearance is decidedly not "little children" or "overweight short people." Rather, they appear more like political cartoons of eras past, where exaggerated features were used as caricatures, adding further to their comical qualities. But this doesn't solve the outstanding problem that, for a game that is often about conflict, the original prototypes for halflings avoided it. They were heroes precisely because they were thrust into difficult situations and had to rise to the challenge. That requires significant work in a campaign to encourage a player to play a halfling character who would rather just stay home.

There's also the simple matter of integrating halflings into societies where they aren't necessarily living apart. Presumably, most human campaigns have farmers; dwarves and elves occupy less civilized niches, where halflings are a working class who lives right alongside the rest of humanity in plain sight. Figuring out how to accommodate them matters a lot. Do humans just treat them like children? Would halflings want to be anywhere near a larger humanoids' dwellings as a result? Or are halflings given mythical status like fey? Or are they more like inveterate pranksters and tricksters, treating them more like gnomes? And if halflings are more like gnomes, then why have gnomes?

There are opportunities to integrate halflings into a world, but they aren't quite so easy to plop down into a setting as dwarves and elves. I still haven't quite figured out how to make them work in my campaign that doesn't feel like a one-off rather than a separate species. But I did finally find a space for gnomes, which I'll discuss in another article.

Your Turn: How have you integrated halflings into your campaign world?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Why do you feel it is the job of the game and game designers to define your character? Because that's essentially what you're saying. You're saying that it's better that the game and the game designers tell everyone who plays this game that the expected way to play X race is to do it in this specific way and anything else is playing against type.

Wouldn't it be FAR better to let players decide that?

Where do they decide that from? What basis in fantasy or elsewhere should they use? Do you expect every player to just create a whole personality and history out of nothing? That's what those write-ups were for, so you have something to build from.

 

[Faolyn]

Where do they decide that from?

Their imaginations.

What basis in fantasy or elsewhere should they use?

The setting book, the DM's input, their own interests, random tables, a character from a TV show that they want to emulate, a class/archetype combo you wanted to try... there's a billion ways to make your character and a billion ways to make a race.

Go with dwarfs. The book lore can be that they mine and craft and are clannish in nature. You can decide if your character is cheerful or surly or something else entirely.

Do you expect every player to just create a whole personality and history out of nothing? That's what those write-ups were for, so you have something to build from.

Er, kind of? I mean, that's what everyone does when they make their character anyway, right? Or you work with the DM and/or other players to make something up.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Their imaginations.


The setting book, the DM's input, their own interests, random tables, a character from a TV show that they want to emulate, a class/archetype combo you wanted to try... there's a billion ways to make your character and a billion ways to make a race.

Go with dwarfs. The book lore can be that they mine and craft and are clannish in nature. You can decide if your character is cheerful or surly or something else entirely.


Er, kind of? I mean, that's what everyone does when they make their character anyway, right? Or you work with the DM and/or other players to make something up.

Are you saying that no one reads the race descriptions? They just make it up from the aether or ask their DM?

 

[Irlo]

Do you expect every player to just create a whole personality and history out of nothing?

We do it for human characters without the need for racial personality traits.

 

[Faolyn]

Are you saying that no one reads the race descriptions? They just make it up from the aether or ask their DM?

I'm saying that insisting that all members of a race act in a specific way is pointless and unneeded, and that players are more than capable of deciding their PC's personality without a book.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm saying that insisting that all members of a race act in a specific way is pointless and unneeded, and that players are more than capable of deciding their PC's personality without a book.

Even Level Up has some amount of heritage write up. Not as prescriptive as 5e, admittedly.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I’m not pigeonholing them, they can have different personalities BUT the surly serious dwarf is the baseline, you build off of that, it takes more effort to make a surly person friendly than one who was already amiable to begin with.

It is also harder to make someone naturally born with a gregarious attitude surly! Congrats, we both have reasons why Charisma might be affected.

Now, do you think we can resolve Nature vs Nurture in a way that works out logically and makes everyone happy? Or can we just trust science on the "it's really complicated" angle and figure that it can be either/or?

 

[Faolyn]

Even Level Up has some amount of heritage write up. Not as prescriptive as 5e, admittedly.

With few exceptions, Level Up write-ups don't try to say that all members of a heritage have specific personality traits. And those few personality traits they do offer are generic: halflings are generally pleasant and orcs are passionate. The end.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Not the person who said it, but I agree with it.

On a broader scale, I strongly support the idea that some species are better (and in some cases, much better) suited for some classes and-or roles and less (or much less, or even outright can't be) suited for others, with Humans being the baseline equally suited to all.

Why are Halflings less capable of having deep faith than humans?

Why are dwarves less capable of speaking words of power than humans?

Why is a Gnome's Oath to bring light and laughter to the world weaker and more fragile than a humans?

Because species other than Dwarves don't quite get how you're trying to lead them, or tend to react more negatively to the way you approach conversation, or etc. etc.

The "other than Dwarves" piece is the key here; as stat bonuses and penalties use Humans as a baseline, what the game is mechanically comparing is how effective a typical Dwarf will be vs a typical Human. This doesn't (or shouldn't!) apply when dealing with other Dwarves.

See, but that isn't how the game actually works or is actually presented. You don't get a bonus to strength when you enter a goblin village. You don't get a subtraction to your dexterity when you go into an Elven Temple. The stats are presented as objective, to a degree. An Ogre has a 19 strength, that is standard for an Ogre, to the point that it is a defined score for a magical item.

It doesn't matter that they are weak for giants, or average for Ogres or incredibly strong for humans, the number is 19 and that doesn't change. So, any bonus or penalty to that number is equally objective. It isn't a penalty because I'm dealing with non-dwarves, it is a penalty in an objective sense, just like giving an Ogre a -3 strength and dropping them to 16 is objectively changing their strength, even though they are still subjectively in the same position relative to giants and human commoners.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Where do they decide that from? What basis in fantasy or elsewhere should they use? Do you expect every player to just create a whole personality and history out of nothing? That's what those write-ups were for, so you have something to build from.

How does allowing someone to play a gregarious Dwarf, and not suffer a penalty to it, prevent someone else from going "I saw Lord of the Rings. I know dwarves are red-heads with axes who are gruff and tough." and make that their character?

You are basically saying that if you don't punish people for thinking outside of the box, then no one will understand that the box exists. But... that's wrong. It is so wrong it is hard to put into words how completely wrong it is. It is so so so much harder to get people out of those tiny boxes, we don't need the game to reinforce them, people will reinforce them just fine on their own.